Hello everyone, Justin here and welcome to the Otaku Mind. This month for the Otaku Mind we’re talking about Cuphead. For those of you who don’t know, Cuphead, was a game that came out in 2017 for the Xbox and PC. It follows the story of two anthropomorphic cups who lose their souls to the Devil and have to collect the souls of others in order to save their souls. The game was a big hit and was one of those games I was sad I would never get a chance to play because I don’t own an Xbox and I’m not a fan of PC games. Luckily, Nintendo came to my rescue by announcing a Cuphead port for the Switch. Over the past few weeks I’ve been playing Cuphead in my spare time and after finally beating it I wanted to give my personal retrospective of this great game.
The Animation
The first thing that makes Cuphead stand out so much is the animation. Even when the game had an 8 second showcase, that was the one thing that grabbed everyone’s attention and for a good reason. We live an era where we try to make the graphics of games look as real as possible but Cuphead does the opposite. This game instead tries to make everything look unreal and is a call back to the cartoons of the 1930s. I love animation. Whether it’s from the east or west I love it and the basic fundamentals for animation all got started in this era. This era of animation is often referred to as the Rubber Hose period which lasted roughly 9 years and was the period before the Golden Age of animation where we got Disney, Merrie Melodies, Looney Tunes and more. During this era, cartoons were seen as still developing art and stuck to three identities. Dark themes, simplistic characters, and defying the laws of physics/reality. Keep in mind, the Rubber Hose period began at the time of the Great Depression, this was a tough period for America. This left a majority of Americans without jobs and businesses closing at a high rate. Because of this, a lot of the cartoons of this period reflected that harsh reality of things being bad for our characters. Nowhere was this seen more then in the cartoons of Inkwell Studios aka Fleischer Studios (the creators of Popeye, Betty Boop, and would later go on to create the first Superman cartoons) which was a heavy influence on Cuphead. The characters of this era also had simple designs. Because animation was still new at this time and a lot of animators were still inexperienced, so it made sense to make the characters as simple as possible but still keep them imaginative and interesting. Take Mickey Mouse for example, why does he only have 3 fingers instead of four? The answer, to save time and money. I know that sounds crazy, but Disney goes on record saying that by giving Mickey only 3 fingers it saved the company thousands of man hours and dollars. To be fair these simplistic designs helped made the characters memorable and gave them a sense of innocence. They’re basically children, simple, innocent, and just want to live a fun life without dealing with the hardships of reality. Finally, defy the laws of physics/reality. With the birth of animation, animators came to the realization that they could get away with anything now. They no longer had to adhere to the rules of physics or reality. In short, anything that they wanted to happen could happen and anything could to be a character. Animals, cars, ghosts and inanimate objects could come alive or be turned into objects like musical instruments. This gave cartoons a surreal humor and allowed people a short escape from the hardships of the world around them and give them something to laugh at or smile to.
These core identities would go on to make up the game of Cuphead. Cuphead’s theme is dark. He is literally going around and killing innocent people just to save his soul from the Devil only to subject others to a fate that should have been his. Still, despite this harsh theme the world is still bright and colorful signaling a hope that Cuphead can in fact save not only himself but everyone as well. Cuphead has a simple design. He’s a cup with an anthropomorphic body but is still entertaining (he’s Mickey Mouse with a cup for a head). He’s has this sense of innocence to him, has a wide range of emotions that range from fear to confident, and he along with the rest of the characters are memorable because of this. These are characters that we never thought we would ever see in a video game. Finally, surreal humor of all these characters defying the laws of physics and reality to give us some of the most entertaining boss battles we have ever seen. Whether it be Hilda Berg’s cool transformation from a blimp to a crescent moon, Werner Berman’s great facial expressions from confidence to frustration, the nightmarish imagery of The Phantom Express, the surrealness of Baroness Bon Bon and her candy army, or The Devil himself who embodies all of these traits in the final battle. They’re all great boss battles and embody the soul and heart of cartoons from the Rubber Hose period.
The Bosses
The boss battles of Cuphead are the second key selling point for this game. While we get about 6 run and gun sections, the boss battles will take up the core of your time and I love these battles. Like I said in the previous section all of these boss battles are great and represent the Rubber Hose period perfectly. Before going into this game, I remember watching reaction videos of other gamers playing against these bosses and failing, so I have to admit I was a little worried about my chances against these bosses. So, how did I do? Well this may just be the Sekiro gamer inside of me talking but these boss battles weren’t really all that hard. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to badmouth the skills of other gamers who had difficulty or brag about my skills. There’s a level of frustration and difficulty to these battles but if you remain “Tranquilo. Asseneyo.” you’ll be fine. I admit I lost a lot of times to these bosses (my death count is 514. I’m not ashamed. A majority of them came on the third isle) but I never found myself getting mad or quitting because each death was my fault due to a lack of knowledge of what to expect and dumb mistakes on my part. After each boss battle I failed I simply took the time to analyze what I did right, wrong, what I should change, and do. It was similar to fighting, I just kept trying until I came up with an answer that my opponent couldn’t counter and except defeat. That’s what a lot of these battles are. You’re meant to fail a number of times before you win so you can analyze the opponent and appreciate all of their forms through the battle. Even if by some stroke of luck you manage to beat the boss on the first try, the completionist inside of you is going to want to go back and face that boss again to get the highest grade or a part of you, the stupidest goddamn part of you, is going to face that boss again just for fun and lose over and over again until you win.
Okay, so which bosses were the easiest and hardest for me? Well the easiest boss of them all had to be Werner Berman. That’s what I’ve heard everyone say and I have to agree with them. His moveset is very predictable and easy to counter. I only died on him twice and they were laughable mistakes on my part for not taking the stage seriously because I was imagining Jerry from Tom and Jerry or Fievel from An American Tail in Werner’s place as a German soldier (tell me that doesn’t get a chuckle out of you?). The hardest boss for me in the game had to be Dr. Kahl’s Robot. His first phase was hard, the robot took up most of the screen giving you not enough room to work with and there was just so much crap you had flying at you that it almost felt overwhelming. The second phase was his easiest part as his flight pattern is easy to figure out, but those homing missiles were annoying and did cause me to die a couple of times. The final phase was the one I had the most trouble with as I couldn’t predict the direction of the emerald shards. Along with trying to attack and avoid those electric fences and shards I truly feel that a lot of my deaths came from this boss battle alone. I don’t know how, but I managed to make it to the final phase without getting hit and just went on a suicide attack where I managed to get the win. Another boss fight I had trouble with was Hoenybottoms. Looking back, she’s not that hard when you get her moveset down, but the problem comes in with the stage and I’ve heard a lot of people had issues with this stage as well. Rather than be a solid platform, you have to keep moving up while jumping from platform to avoid the honey. Sounds simple, except you have to avoid the attacks of Honeybottom and her bees, if you go too far up you’ll get hurt, the platforms generate randomly each time so there’s no way to come up with a sound strategy that gives you the edge, and the whole stage is yellow including the platforms so it’s hard to discern what’s part of the background and foreground. Especially, when you’re trying to dodge attacks.
Gameplay and Power-ups
Just like the game is visually impressive, so too is the gameplay as it’s very responsive to my actions. The music is big band jazz music a genre of music that was actually very prominent in these kinds of cartoons. Jazz music was very popular around the time period of the Rubber Hose period and influenced everyone in America no matter their social class or ethnicity. The powers up were good as well but I do feel that some of them were pointless and unnecessary. My favorite shooters were the spread and chaser. Those were my two main shooters throughout the game. I feel like you can honestly beat the game with the just these 2 shooters alone. I would swipe in the charge shot every now and then for that extra damage and I did use that weapon to beat the Devil’s first phase. The Lobber was useless. No offence to anyone that used it, but that shooter was useless. I tried using it once and it failed me big time. The other shooter I didn’t use was the Roundabout, but to that’s one credit it can be useful when used correctly and I have seen videos of other players use it to effectively take down bosses. Not my style but when used correctly it’s effective. The charms were all helpful. My favorite was the parry sugar which is a charm I recommend for players who just aren’t good at parrying at the beginning of the game and is really helpful when doing boss battles. The Heart which gives you an extra hit point is another charm I recommend getting. While it slightly weakens your attack power that extra hit point just calms your nerves to know that you have a little wiggle room to get hit. There’s a second one that gives you two hearts but I never used it and it makes your attacks even weaker, so I only recommend getting that one if you’re really confident in your skills. The final charm that I liked and recommend you get later in the game is the Smoke Bomb. Ironically, I didn’t think I was gonna need that charm and ignored it, but that charm was the thing that helped me beat the bosses in King Dice’s battle. The other charms are a parry attack and Coffee which automatically fills up your super meter. I didn’t really need or use them but if you want them, they’re there. As far as supers go, the second art was my favorite. That short moment of invincibility was my key to defeating the Devil and King Dice. Speaking of King Dice and the Devil, a lot of people felt that King Dice should have been the main villain and I can understand why. However, we can’t forget the dark themes that this game was inspired by and it doesn’t get much darker than being a servant of the Devil and being forced to do his bidding in order to save your life.
Conclusion
In the end Cuphead was a marvelous game that I enjoyed playing. It’s one of the most unique games I’ve ever seen and one that the celebrates and respects animation and what makes it so great. If you own a Switch, Xbox, or PC definitely give this game a try. It’s only $20 plus tax on the Switch and is worth the price of admission for the visuals alone. I know DLC content for this game is coming out this year and I hope it makes its way over to the Switch. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.
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